


That Haunts and Sleeps

by You_Light_The_Sky



Series: Lost Notebook - Drabble Collection [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Drabble Series, Eventual Happy Ending, Forgiveness, Harry is here to haunt Tom with kindness, M/M, Slow Burn, Standalone, Tiếng Việt | Vietnamese, Translation Available, how do feelings - a memoir by lord voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2019-11-21 04:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 15,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18137462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: COMPLETE. The Dark Lord should have won when he killed the Boy-Who-Lived. But Harry's ghost lives on and haunts him with kindness... and this so-called mercy."Do you crave it, Tom?"Vietnamese translation available





	1. That Curses

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Tiếng Việt available: [Kẻ Ám Ảnh và Người Say Giấc](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20372977) by [Jellyfish (DandelionAdrian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DandelionAdrian/pseuds/Jellyfish)



> I found this drabble in this old notebook from 2011 that I dug up. I decided that I'm gonna make a drabble series out of it. See where I can take this. Wish me luck.

“I forgive you.”

The Dark Lord freezes, watching the green-eyed boy in shock. It’s been years. He killed the boy a long time ago, convinced that everything would be complete, _sane_ , if he did so.

Yet here the boy still stands, translucent and flickering between life and death.

The boy looks at him now, with no hatred, only calm and… this warmth that Voldemort does not understand.

It hurts to look.

“Turn away from me, Potter—”

“No,” he says softly, and Voldemort flinches because he is not a weakling to be coddled, and yet, the boy’s _eyes—_ “I forgive you, Tom.”

“Don’t say that name!” he hisses. Tom Riddle died the day he made that diary. But those green eyes are as inescapable as Avada Kedevra. “Stop _looking_ at me, stop existing, stop staying that—”

The boy’s cold hand goes through the Dark Lord’s cheek. The cold feels like rot and rejuvenation settling into his skin.

“Tom… I forgive you.”

Potter takes another step forward and glides his hand towards the Dark Lord’s, like a trail of frost spreading across a window.

“I forgive the murder, the hate, the fear, because I _know_ you. I’m your soul. I’m the one you can’t live without and… I forgive you.”

They stand in silence until the Dark Lord realizes that his tears are cold.


	2. That Creeps

The runes etched on the Dark Lord’s skin burn and disappear into deathly sparks. He hisses when the symbols fade into the air, erased by some invisible hand.

Yet another ritual rendered obsolete.

Voldemort grabs the cauldron and throws in the dragonheart and phoenix blood.

“That won’t work, you know,” the boy’s ghost floats upside-down. His slender hands fiddle with an unseen string, tangled against his fingers. “None of the last seventeen have.”

“Silence,” he hisses for the seventeenth time. And isn’t that insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? “I’ll be rid of you yet.”

Turning back right-side-up, the boy quirks his lips. “Is it really so bad, me hanging around?”

“Of course it is! You’re infuriating! I can’t—” _can’t curse, can’t cast the Cruciatus, can’t tear blood into his enemies without seeing those green eyes watching watching JUDGING him with the words of forgive  forgive forgive (LiAr)—_

“Not as if I can stop you,” the boy shrugs, passing his hand through the Dark Lord’s skull like trying to part the ocean. Nothing but cold sinking into his veins. “See? Harmless. I can’t do anything.”

The green watches him carefully.

The Dark Lord hisses back at him. This trickery, this strange power-he-knows-not, has to be a magic Voldemort has not mastered. He refuses to believe anything else.

Otherwise—

He throws the make-shift potion on himself, watches desperately as the potion fades into his skin, into nothing but air and a still-present boy.

—why else would Potter’s stare freeze him in place?


	3. That Snakes

Bellatrix rushes straight through the boy’s ghost, without a hint of frost or cold. “My lord,” she bows so low, she could touch his feet. “Hogsmeade continues to resist. The prisoners have still not broken their spirits.”

“Continue torturing them,” Voldemort orders, stepping over her towards the stairs. “Do whatever it takes to make them give up the location of the Order. But _don’t_ kill them.”

“Of course,” Bellatrix’s eyes hunger for more screams. “I will make them talk.”

“See to it you do. Inform MacNair that he will lead the next raid on Hogsmeade. If he does not make the village surrender, raze it to the ground.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Potter hovers horizontally a few inches from the ground, lazily wading his hands forward to swim forward in the air. “The hag will ask questions.”

“You will not lead the raid yourself, my Lord?” Bellatrix asks in confusion.

“See?” Potter says just as Voldemort hisses, “I have far more important tasks to attend to! Now leave me!”

He leaves before Bellatrix can plead for mercy. As if a string connects them both, Potter’s ghost zips behind him.

“You’re not going to try to get rid of me again, are you? S’pretty boring after the first three times.”

“Silence.”

“Make me. Oh wait, spells don’t work on me anymore,” Potter shrugs.

“There must be some magic that—”

[ _Master?_ ] Nagini uncurls from his throne. Potter’s lips twitch in distaste at what Voldemort has transformed the headmaster’s office into. Nothing but his dark throne and Dumbledore’s torn portrait. [ _Why is there another that smells like you?_ ]

He stills. [ _You can smell him_?]

[ _She can probably see me too_.]

Voldemort’s head whips around towards him. [ _You speak Parseltongue?!_ ] How much of his soul ended up in the boy? How much knowledge did the boy gain from him?

Potter’s ghost only shrugs, floating over to Nagini to stroke her scales. The brat has her snuggling into his icy touch, shivering in delight. How strange… how would this boy interact with his other horcruxes?

Voldemort nearly stops breathing.

“The other horcruxes…” he whispers.


	4. That Hurts

“Don’t do this, Tom. Don’t hurt them.”

“I am Lord Voldemort. I will do as I please.” The Dark Lord stalks down towards the dungeons, towards the prisoners he seeks.

“They don’t know anything, just stop!” Potter tries to grab onto the Dark Lord’s shoulders but passes through. Nagini snakes behind them, hissing in displeasure as her master and new plaything ignore her. “Just ask me what you want to know. I’ll tell you. Just don’t touch them!”

“No,” Voldemort answers, relishing in the helpless face Potter gives him. This is the face Potter should always have. Potter should never have power over him.

“I destroyed all your horcruxes myself! All but Nagini!” Potter shouts.

He freezes on the stairwell.

“That’s what you figured out, right? I burned the diadem in hellfire, stabbed the diary and cup with basilisk fangs, killed the locket with Gryffindor’s sword… and I…”

“And you walked to your death just so I could die,” Voldemort hisses.

Potter’s fists clench silver as moonlight passes through the window. “Yes.” His form flickers from silver to the stone of the stairs. Unstable. Steady. Liminal and permanent.

Voldemort feels his breath leave him. Is this the reason Potter has returned to him after so many years...?

“Look at you now,” a slow smile snakes across his face, “Neither dead or alive. The one horcrux I will never be rid of.”

Potter turns paler than a dead heart.

“Yes…” the Dark Lord moves closer, hands hovering over Potter’s cheek. “That’s right… you can never leave me. So _I_ can never die.”

Potter doesn’t shiver, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t sweat or cry. He hovers and looks steadily at the Dark Lord.

“…Will you still hurt them?”

Voldemort laughs. “For this revelatory gift? No. Your filthy mudbloods will remain unharmed.”

For now.


	5. That Watches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> double update today :)

Bellatrix and Macnair throw Aberforth Dumbledore and Madame Rosmerta at the Dark Lord’s feet. He leans back on his throne and smiles at the wounds on their faces. Yet another remnant of the Order, of the Resistance, kneeling at his feet. They’ve been like a persistent infestation of insects during his rule, using Potter as a fallen martyr for their cause. But soon, after all these years since Potter’s death, he will be rid of them.

By his shoulder, Potter makes a tiny gasp.

The Dark Lord smiles widely at the sound. His little horcrux can do nothing to stop this. His horcrux’s words are merely echoes of a lost thing called a conscience that he shed when he first found the Chamber of Secrets. A being like him, he is greater than mortal flaws like a conscience.

His followers cackle and jeer, waiting to feel their Lord’s power, while the Malfoys stand quietly at the back. More ghostly than his little horcrux.

He leans back, feeling the cool presence of his little horcrux by his shoulder and Nagini slumbering by his feet.

“ _Legimens_ ,” Voldemort whispers, not bothering to tease out his prey. The sooner the rest of the Order is stomped out, the sooner he can turn his attentions to conquering the rest of Europe.

His little horcrux tenses as Aberforth and Rosmerta writhe in agony from the mental assault but says nothing, unlike the first few times Voldemort tried to torture someone when his horcrux’s ghost first appeared. The grating sound of his horcrux’s disapproving voice hasn’t sounded once. If not for the cold, Voldemort would think his horcrux wasn’t there at all.

Good. Now Voldemort can focus on his job.

He dives through the stream of Aberforth’s and Rosmerta’s memories, finding little mental blocks save for the _location_ of the Order. Hidden from him yet again because of the Fidelius Charm. So these two weren’t the secret keepers.

Voldemort snatches up his wand, the word _Cruciatus_ itching to rip from his lips, nothing to stop him, but—

The cold from his little horcrux itches up his spine, into his very bones, digging and digging the slow way water wears away stone.

His little horcrux has said nothing, and yet _everything_ , in his silence.

“Take them to the dungeons,” Voldemort spits out. “I will deal with them personally later.”

He is not weak. He will not let his horcrux, his own _soul,_ affect him so. He merely has better use of his time than to torture such lower beings.

He does not shiver when his little horcrux (finally) whispers a small thank you.


	6. That Grieves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you haven't already, read ch 5 first because i updated twice today :)

Britain is practically under his rule already. Let the Order try and rebel. They are nothing but little flies, a minor inconvenience, but no great obstacle to his plan. Instead, he’ll focus on moving towards Europe.

Voldemort marches down the hall towards the Room of Requirement. There, he won’t be disturbed by any of his followers. As he passes by the empty classrooms, he hears a quiet gasp.

His little horcrux has stopped following him, hovering by the entrance to the Great Hall.

“Ah,” a slow smile snakes across the Dark Lord’s face. “So you’ve seen it.”

His little horcrux doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

Gleeful, Voldemort walks into the Great Hall, past the rows of empty tables and the enchanted starry ceiling. The only light that shadows his steps comes from the pews of candles floating above the front of the Great Hall arranged like the pipes of a cathedral organ.

There, beneath the floating candles, lies the long glass coffin surrounded by black roses and spider lilies, by silver engraved snakes and the dark mark along the borders. There, still perfectly preserved, as if he were sleeping, the heroine of some twisted fairy tale, lies the Boy-Who-Lived. His body, dressed in fine robes and those hideous glasses. The scar, as delightfully red as ever.

“Why,” his horcrux’s ghost shakes, as if he can still feel. “Why do… any of this? I… I’m…?”

“Beautiful,” Voldemort strokes the edges of the glass, just above the body’s heart. “The perfect monument to my greatest victory. Forever immortalized.” _Like me_ , he doesn’t say. _Like you_ , he doesn’t add.

He lets himself bask in that feeling again, that triumph. He has never felt that much triumph since killing the Boy-Who-Lived. All that he has left is to pick apart the rest of the world, and to rule for eternity—with his horcrux by his side, of course. It’s poetic, in a way the Voldemort has never appreciated. He has everything and forever to enjoy it.

He waits for his horcrux to react, to show helplessness or joy or anger. Anything. He waits to soak it in.

But his little horcrux doesn’t move or cry or react at all. He merely stares down at his own body and whispers, “Is it really such a great victory? Killing someone who had barely six years of magical education? Someone who didn’t even duel you in the end? _That’s_ your greatest triumph?”

Voldemort freezes. Then the anger comes. “How _dare_ you? When you, a mere babe, destroyed me. Made me nothing but a wraithlike spirit, neither living or dead. When your _touch_ burned me until I used you to resurrect me? When you destroyed my horcruxes? You call yourself weak?” He’d hurt his horcrux if he could, torture him, destroy him—

(But he already has—)

His horcrux only shrugs, unaffected by the tirade.

“I just find it a little sad, actually.”

For the rest of the night, his horcrux refuses to speak.

 


	7. That Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! School and sadness, you understand ^^

Voldemort does not dread.

( _they’ve locked him in the attic again, with nothing to eat, he claws and claws at the door but it never opens, those filthy caretakers, those disgusting orphans, he’s better than this, better than them, he is not afraid of the dark or the cold because he’s special, SPEciAl, spEciAl—_ )

His little horcrux’s silence is a godsend, gives Voldemort time to figure out how to make Nagini the same kind of creature as his little horcrux. Just as unkillable, unseeable, and unreachable by all but the Dark Lord. No one else will touch his soul again.

But how? How did Potter become his horcrux, much less this ghost? When Voldemort concentrates, he can feel the tether between himself and Nagini, between himself and his little ghost. How can Voldemort repeat the same process to keep Nagini with him?

“Potter,” Voldemort demands, because his little horcrux refuses to answer to any other name. A lingering attachment to his former host. It won't linger for long…

His little horcrux hovers by the bookcase, fingers tracing the worn scars on each spine.

“Potter!” Voldemort says louder.

His damned horcrux keeps staring at the bookcase.

“I said, _Potter_!”

Like a leaf caught in a stream, his little horcrux drifts towards the window, moonlight painting him in parts invisible and visible.

That’s it. Voldemort storms over. No one, not even part of his own soul, ignored him or turns away from him. He reaches out his hand, only—

His little horcrux turns then, and Voldemort’s hands fall through him, dipped in the ice cold of cemeteries and rot. His little horcrux’s eyes are blotted out, ink black with writhing worms and maggots dripping down like tears…!

“No!” Voldemort flinches and reaches up. “No, not you! Potter!”

His immortality, his soul, his companion—

“My Lord?!” his death eaters burst in, wands ready for possible assassination attempts, only to see Voldemort grasping at nothing at all.

His horcrux is gone and rotting and Voldemort feels…!

Feels…!

::

(“Wake up!”)

::

This terrible pain, this need to gouge out his eyes, what is this…?

::

(“WAKE UP!”)

::

The Dark Lord gasps, opening his eyes to piles of books and scrolls on horcruxes. Ancient texts he hid away in Albania and finally brought to his headquarters in Hogwarts.

He sees his little horcrux inches away from his face, staring at him with a frown.

For a moment, Voldemort only breathes, and watches his little horcrux pretend to do the same.

“You… your eyes…” Voldemort mutters. They’re still startingly green, even as a ghost, not inky with maggots. Another reason Potter cannot be a normal ghost. No this has something to do with horcrux magic, it must.

His little horcrux winces, “You aren't going to say they're like my mother's, are you? Because the last man I heard that from died…”

“Of course not!” Voldemort snaps. “What reason would I ever have to remember her eyes? To remember any victim's eyes?”

His horcrux’s frown deepens.

“Yet you pay attention to mine…”

“You’re the only one I would pay attention to.”

His little horcrux’s jaw falls open and Voldemort doesn't see why. Is his little horcrux not a part of his soul? His marked one? Why would Voldemort look at anyone else but him? He who is essentially himself?

Yet something distant enters his little horcrux’s eyes. Irrationally, Voldemort thinks of the dream, of watching his little horcrux rot away to nothing, gone, while Voldemort remains with that terrible pain (likely related to losing part of your soul, and nothing else so weak—) forever staring at empty space-

“You!” Voldemort finds himself grasping at his horcrux’s limbs, at cold air and death. “You can never leave me because of the magic, because of our souls!” Right? Potter can never leave him! “We’re bound together. Tell me that you will never leave!”

Potter looks as shaken as the wind could ever look. “Tom…”

“ _Tell me_!”

Slowly, Potter puts a hand against the Dark Lord’s. “...I will stay for as long as I can.”

That’s all the Dark Lord needs to hear.


	8. That Fractures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter should be called: In which Voldemort needs a life coach

Death eaters hover by his door. They whisper amongst themselves and hush as soon as he steps out of the room.

Voldemort silences their hearts with one glare before he storms down the hall.

“They think you’ve gone mad,” his little horcrux comments.

“Let them think what they will.” He shrugs.

It isn't as if they have any power to stop him. No one does anymore. He’s locked his enemies up (because scum does not need to be dealt with by his hands, not because Potter requested it) and his equal has become his horcrux.

“I hear them wondering when you’ll go out and conquer the rest of Europe. They’ve noticed you talking to me.” Talking to nothing, he doesn’t say.

“Let them.” No mortal will ever be able to comprehend the intricacies and brilliance of his mind. “Unless they plot an uprising, I have no care for what they gossip.”

“Oh. Well.” His horcrux stops, making Voldemort nearly step through him. “That’s going to be a problem.”

“ _What._ ” Voldemort whirls around, facing his horcrux (and, consequently, his spooked Death Eaters who fly to the ground, expecting a Cruciatus.)

“Nothing! It’s just. Well. What did you expect after months of just… storming back and forth in your office doing nothing? People talk. Maybe fear isn’t the greatest motivator anymore. Ever try putting in a loyalty card?”

“ _You would betray me?!_ ” (Neither of them notice the cowering Death Eaters, heads pressed against the stone floors, begging for mercy.) How long has his horcrux known of these plans to usurp him? How long was his horcrux going to stay quiet? Were the _I forgive you_ s lies? Pretty poetry spoken because of horcrux magic or even—

“Now, hang on! What would I betray you to? No one but Nagini can speak or see me. Besides, I thought you knew! You torture anyone who even _thinks_ of betraying you. You read _minds!_ ”

The red rage in him subsides, but only just. Like a tsunami being held back by a mere bit of string. “Then tell me who plots against me. Prove yourself.”

(The forgotten Death Eaters begin wailing random names and _I have no idea what’s happening_ —)

Potter’s green eyes spark dangerously, the light of curses about to go out. “Or what?” he hisses. “You can’t hurt me. I have no reason to help you hurt others.”

[ _You said you forgave me_ ,] Voldemort hisses in Parseltongue. Was that a lie?

(“Oh great, he’s going to get his snake to kill us! This is your fault, Greyson!” Death Eater 1 says to Death Eater 2.)

[ _I may forgive you, but I never said I’d help you keep going down the same path. That’s your choice alone._ ]

[ _Fine then!_ ] He doesn’t need to hurt Potter. There are his friends, still in the dungeons… That mudblood and her Weasley… Hurt them, and Potter will talk…

(“We’re all going to die!” Death Eater 2 wails.)

Voldemort raises his wand, pointing at the incessant blubbering Death Eaters in front of him. They need to shut up. The whole world needs to shut up and _listen_ to him…!

… But will Potter keep forgiving him?

His spell falters.

The Cruciatus misses its mark.


	9. That Burns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate chapter title: In which Voldemort takes tsundere to the next level

He doesn’t _care_.

Voldemort casts the Fiendfrye deep into the forest, listening to the fire cackle as it eats wood and animal alike. The grounds, the half-giant’s empty hut, the corrals for empty Care of Magical Creatures lessons—the hungry glow of fire devours them all.

He doesn’t _care_ —

(His Death Eaters stare at him in silence when the Cruciatus hits stone instead of flesh, and Voldemort can only roar, _“LEAVE!_ ” because he does not make mistakes. He is not weak. He is not tied to Potter’s ghost, he can break free anytime and yet—)

The fire reaches for Voldemort’s face, still so hungry. It grows and grows but can never be satisfied. The more fuel to burn, the more fuel to _live_ , the better. Sparks die against the Dark Lord’s face.

“Hey stop! Stay back! You’ll _burn!_ ” Potter’s ghost shouts, his pearly form practically shining in the fire’s light. The fire will never reach him.

Voldemort starts to laugh.

“ _Tom!_ ” Potter’s hands are so cold against this terrible heat.

“You’re just trying to control me.” Voldemort sees it now, his weakness. Potter’s so-called forgiveness is a spell, some cultish magic, that ties Voldemort down and limits his actions. But he won’t be limited now. He won’t be tied down by some _attachment_ to Potter’s eyes. Let it all burn then. Nagini will bring Voldemort back to life, so long as Potter is gone.

“You’re not thinking clearly! You don’t even know if this will _work!_ So you die and come back, what if I’m still here? What then? You’ve only one horcrux left after that. _Me!_ ”

“I don’t _CARE!_ ” Voldemort roars, about humanity, about forgiveness, about this leech of a ghost—!

“Well _I CARE!_ ”

Voldemort stops. He swears that his heart nearly stops beating. The only thing that breathes or roars is the fire.

Potter hovers in front of him, looking as small and defeated as he did when Voldemort killed him. The silver outlines of his body glimmer in the fire, like a flickering mirage. He looks like a lost soul in hell. He… is he crying?

The Dark Lord’s hands reach out, yet they pass through Potter’s cheeks.

“Please…” Potter whispers. “Step away from here. Let’s talk about this. Let’s find a solution together.”

No, he refuses to be weak. No, he refuses to be controlled. No, he refuses to be powerless to work his spells.

And yet… those tears…

Voldemort steps away from the fire.

He does not see the unhappy frowns on his Death Eaters’ faces in the distance. He does not know that they whisper for greater leadership, saner leadership. He does not feel their thirst for power.

(No one has ever cried for the Dark Lord before.)


	10. That Wonders

“What are you?” Voldemort demands, as soon as they enter private quarters (at Potter’s insistence.)

Potter rolls his eyes. “ _Now_ you ask that? Maybe we should talk about something else… like your desire to burn down the forest, instead.”

Voldemort glowers down at him. “I could hurt your friends.”

“But that wouldn’t give you the same satisfaction, would it? You like things to be a bit more _personal_ with us.”

The Dark Lord scowls.

“Thought so.”

“We’re _enemies_ marked by prophecy. I _had_ to get rid of you myself.” No one else can take Potter’s pain from him, his struggles or his battles. Voldemort would _destroy_ them.

“Right… I thought I was a ‘part of you’, as you went on about for the last month. Your ‘little horcrux.’”

“You _are_ my horcrux. But that’s not all you are, is it?” Voldemort ignores the burning heat on his face. If Potter was purely his horcrux, he could never make Voldemort feel this… this…?

“Well. No. I’m Harry Potter. Took you long enough to see that.”

Voldemort scowls.

“I could walk into the fire again. I don’t need to waste my time _speaking_ with you if you won’t give me information.”

“ _No,_ no, wait. I’ll tell you what I know,” Potter looks so distraught that Voldemort can’t help but… preen. This _feeling_ might be a weakness, but at least it’s one that Potter shares and Voldemort can still exploit.

“Then answer my question. What are you? Why do you...” Voldemort refuses to finish the question. _Why do you pretend to care?_

“…I guess I’m like a ghost. But not really.”

Voldemort narrows his eyes, wishing the action could _burn_ some incentive into Potter’s words. “Elaborate.”

“Well, as far as I know, ghosts come about when someone doesn’t choose to pass on. So some part of them remains… but it’s not really them, is it? Maybe it’s their magic, looking for an anchor…” Potter stares at some distant spot, just beyond Voldemort’s shoulder. “They don’t know what it’s like on the other side.”

Voldemort’s chest constricts, as if feral moths have woken inside his ribcage and have begun trying to claw their way out.

“…You know what it’s like on the other side?”

Quietly, Potter nods.

Voldemort steps back. It occurs to Voldemort then, that Potter is more dead than alive. When Voldemort was killed by his own Avada Kedevra two decades ago, his soul merely ripped apart from his body and clung to the nearest host. He knew the agony of living because he refused to see the other side.

And yet this boy has been there and back, unlike any ghost.

“…Why are you here?” And _how_. How has Potter evaded death?

Potter’s smile is bitter moonlight. “I told you. To forgive you.”

“ _I don’t know what that means!_ ” Voldemort hisses.

“S’alright.” Potter shrugs. “You don’t have to. I came back for you. Nothing else, really. I’ll stay for as long as I’m allowed to. That’s all I know.”

Voldemort scoffs. Potter will always remain, he’s not _allowed_ to leave. So that won’t be a problem. “This… forgiveness… What does it mean?”

For a long time, Potter doesn’t answer.

“…As long as you keep trying to live. I’ll try to show you. But only if you try to listen.”


	11. That Listens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a while! I slipped into a bit of a depression episode for a while, then I tried to get back on my feet by writing happier things and oneshots for a while. Thank you for waiting so patiently. Back to daily updates when I can. Let's finish this journey together.

He chokes on spiders. They crawl down his throat, legs jangling and scratching for more prey. Or perhaps they claw up, trying to escape, trying to live. Nonetheless, he coughs and coughs, seeing their mangled little bodies splayed across his frayed sheets and nearly shrieks, his head hitting the top of his cupboard.

As dust falls down around him, painting his hair and sheets in deathly chalk white like a new soul entering the valley of death, he starts to cry.

_ I can’t do this anymore _ , he thinks, hugging his wobbly knees.  _ I can’t, I can’t _ ! Though he’s not sure what exactly he ‘can’t’ do, he just knows that if he stays any longer with the Dursleys he’ll do something drastic.

The walls are closing in. Everything’s too cold. This worn blanket can’t even cover him. He huddles in closer to himself, nails digging into his skin. He’s alone (maybe it’s his fault), and no one’s ever coming for him. It’s dark and terrible and…!

Voldemort reaches out his arms towards him, and his hands just… pass through...

::

He’s only five and Dudley shoves his face against the ground again, jeering, “Freak!” over and over…

Voldemort roars and flares his magic at the ugly child but his powers are like air, completely harmless and invisible, he’s not better than a  _ muggle _ , and Dudley grinds his rubber soles deeper against his cheek...

::

Aunt Petunia throws a pan at his feet and demands that he cook the sausages again…

“I could destroy you,” Voldemort hisses, and yet no snakes come. He’s alone...

::

Uncle Vernon boxes his ears in until his vision stays blurred, even with his glasses on, and he topples over to the cupboard in tears and pain…

“Crucio!” Voldemort roars with all the hate he has ever felt and more, this burning need to do  _ more  _ than hurt. “Crucio, crucio,  _ crucio! _ ” he roars again and yet the words are nothing but words and he’s locked 

::

_ I’m so tired,  _ Voldemort hears.

( _ I’m with you _ ,) something warm whispers against the scar on his head and Voldemort watches Harry _ _ finally sleep.

::

Voldemort wakes with tears on his face, for the first time in his life.


	12. That Weeps

He wants to burn the tears away, until not even the vapour remains, but they keep streaming down. He’s not that child who raged against the orphanage anymore, and even then, he had his magic. In that nightmare, he was no better than a scummy muggle. His magic wouldn’t listen to him. And he watched his Harry crumble until--

“Tom?”

In the dark, Harry’s ghostly form glows softer than the gentlest stars, but just as distant. A gush of wind could blow away his form in an instant, leaving Voldemort with nothing but memories and  _ memories _ . 

“They hurt you,” Voldemort hisses. “Those muggles you live with, they  _ hurt  _ you.” 

Within the blurriness of tears, Harry looks disjointed, spread thing like some terrible modern muggle painting, the kind that never paints people are they are. Just colourful monstrosities.

“You… you could see the Dursleys?”

Yes. That’s what they’re called. The ones that broke Harry apart until he  _ wanted  _ to d--

“Where are they?” Voldemort storms from his bed, determined to use a scrying stone or blood magic to find those rotten Dursleys and make them suffer tenfold for every moment they made Harry feel  _ that _ . He’ll pull apart their veins, he’ll gouge out their eyes, he’ll--

“Why?! So you can kill them?! You can’t!”

“Don’t protect those  _ scum! _ ” Voldemort hisses, the tears flying off his cheeks as if to whip paint towards whatever they touch. “I saw what they did and I could do  _ nothing! _ Well, now I’ll  _ end  _ them!”

“No!” Harry’s hands pass through Voldemort’s, just like Voldemort’s did in the dream, and Voldemort just wants to  _ rage _ . “There’s no point to that. I’m dead. It’s over--”

“And they made you  _ want to die _ .”

Pure cold enters Harry’s eyes. “Says the one who  _ killed  _ me.”

Oh.

Voldemort steps back, his knees totter against him.

Oh.

Voldemort’s back hits a stand of potions vials. They crack and spill, oozing smoke and burns along the wooden shelves, as Voldemort’s back slides down to the floor.

A laugh. Whose laugh? The sounds rip through his throat and eyes, he sees only that blurriness and those green Avada Kedavra eyes (yes, yes, that’s how he  _ killed  _ him, yes.)

That’s right. Harry’s dead. He’ll always be dead. Voldemort will never touch himi, can never take him away from danger like that, because he’s  _ dead _ . Voldemort can do  _ nothing  _ and Harry is  _ dead, dead, dead-- _

The muggles made Harry want to die (unforgivable, unforgiVaBLE!) but  _ HE  _ finished Harry. He killed him.

“--Tom?! Tom, what are you doing?! Stop, get away from those shelves, those potions are burning through your robes!  _ TOM! _ ”

“I’m sorry,” those words rip out as easily as the tears and the screams and the twisted laughs, “I’m  _ sorry _ .”

Ah, if only eyes alone could kill. Harry, his horcrux, would have the stunning gaze of a basilisk then.

“You... “ Harry whispers, “you regret killing me?”

Yes. Yes. No. Yes. “I’m sorry,” he says again, as if they’re the only words he knows. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,  _ I’m sorry _ , I’m--”

Cold hands pass through his lips. Those Avada Kedevra eyes should never look so anguished, so human.

If only he could lean into those hands for  _ real-- _

Sorrysorrysorry _ sorry _

“...I’m here, Tom. I’m still here.”

(But not really.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that awkward moment where you realize you care maybe love (how do feelings) about someone you've already killed ahahaha


	13. That Tries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! Very busy weekend with family matters. This is the first part of a TRIPLE UPDATE because I was absent all weekend.

How pathetic. A Dark Lord trying to find comfort in a ghost. And yet, Voldemort feels as if something missing has slid into place within his very soul. 

He swears he can feel Harry’s hands stroking his head, as if those hands were once warm… like the hint of fading warmth from dying embers. Voldemort’s pathetic mother never held him, she died uselessly before she could. The caretakers at the orphanage only touched him when necessary as a babe and then no one dared come near him.

Is this strange feeling, this cacophony of warmth and cold, what other humans feel when they’re embraced?

It’s addicting. 

He tries to bury his head within that almost warmth, that strange cool touch, but his head passes through Harry’s chest, like plunging his skull into Arctic cold waters in attempts to find Harry Potter’s corporeal heart.

He gasps, his back hitting the shelf again.

“Stop doing that!” Harry scolds, hands fluttering in concern with their elusive cold warmth. “You’ll hurt yourself!”

Voldemort barely reacts, starting ravenously at Harry’s hands, at  _ Harry _ .

What would eternity be like if he could feel Harry Potter's touch? Feel the warmth that once was?

He may have killed Harry Potter, but he’s brilliant, practically a god. Hasn’t he cheated death itself? What is death but an obstacle for Lord Voldemort now?

“I can fix this,” the Dark Lord’s eyes gleam blood red.

“Your cuts? Yeah a simple healing tonic should do the trick. Maybe there’s a spell for this…”

“I can bring you back to life,” he reaches out to pull Harry close, hands slam-falling to the ground instead. “I can craft a new body for you. What are humans but blood and water? Just need your bones, then blood, then you will be by my side  _ forever _ .”

Harry stares at him, as if confronted with complex arithmetic and told to solve it to save the world.

“I’m sorry… but  _ what?! _ I thought you hated me?”

But Voldemort hardly hears him, now scouring his shelves for a suitable tome. The potion stains on his robes smoke and singe, yet the fervor of new knowledge keeps his movements swift.

“Tom! Tom stop! You can’t do this! I lived, I died, that’s  _ it! _ You don’t have  _ time  _ to worry about something like this!”

“But you’re mine,” the Dark Lord says, brows furrowed, seeing different theories for necromancy instead of Harry’s face.

“I’m not a possession!”

_ Yes you are _ , he doesn’t say.

_ You’re a horcrux after all. _

“I won’t be helpless like a  _ muggle  _ again!” Voldemort hisses, and Harry can only watch in horror as Voldemort gathers and hunts for new ingredients…

Neither of them see the Death Eaters spying through a keyhole, whispering to each other confirmations of their Lord’s madness.

“It’s as you said,” Death Eater 1 says to Death Eater 2, “he’s not suited for leadership anymore.”

“When should we strike?” Death Eater 3 asks Death Eater 2.

Malfoy takes off his hood and frowns.

“Tonight.”


	14. Interlude: Malfoy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second part of a TRIPLE UPDATE because I was absent this weekend.

Draco has always been a coward. His past self, the ignorant brat who strutted down Hogwarts hallways without a care in the world, would have denied this. But after the Dark Lord, after Potter’s death, Draco knows better.

_ Coward,  _ his nightmares, filled with glasses wearing ghosts and scars, claw at him every night.  _ Coward, coward, so what if you were on the winning side? Do you feel like a winner now?  _

No, he thinks, as he stares at his father’s dull and dazed eyes from only a few years in Azkaban. Not at all. 

His father is barely alive to be called living. His mother acts like a servant to protect her son. And Draco cowers because that’s the only way he can live, and yet is he alive at all, truly? Can he say that the Malfoy house is so noble anymore? Just a house of dolls on strings…

“You loved him,” the mudblood Granger mocks him when he can’t muster enough hate to torture her. “You  _ loved  _ Harry and you were just too much of a  _ coward  _ to make amends with him, to show him how you really felt. How does it feel now, Draco? How will you feel when Voldemort casts you aside once your family has lived its use?”

He can’t even raise his wand against her at that point. It’s all true.

Maybe he did love Harry Potter (or the idea of him at least) because when he saw Harry Potter died, something in him died too. Maybe the cruel part of him. And all that was left was fear. 

Maybe that’s why he lets Granger use him as a double agent, carrying messages back and forth between what’s left of the Order. Maybe that’s why he whispers and sows discord among the Death Eater ranks. Maybe that’s why he leads Neville and what’s left of the Order into Hogwarts to storm Voldemort’s hideout. 

Maybe he stared at the Dark Lord one day, saw the Dark Lord murmur the word  _ Potter  _ somehow, sickenly, lovingly, and that was the last straw.

Weakness to exploit.

So like a coward, Draco waits. Draco bides his time. Draco leads the Order into the castle, unbeknownst to the Death Eaters staging their coup d’etat. And Draco strikes.


	15. That Kills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last part of a TRIPLE UPDATE because I was absent this weekend.

Both Harry and Voldemort feel a terrible pain within their very souls. Then they hear screaming. And curses.

Voldemort hisses in displeasure and storms towards the Great Hall. What awaits him there is utter chaos and fire.

Death eaters left and right duel each other, screaming about traitors and loyalty. At another corner, what’s left of the Order take out the Death Eaters distracted by inner conflicts. From the Great Hall’s entrance, Voldemort sees his prisoners begin to stream into the hall, free and ready to fight. 

In the center of it all, Voldemort sees Draco and Narcissa leading the rogue group of Death Eaters towards him.

No. It can’t be.

Voldemort’s hands clench and he snarls, waves of red sparks whipping around him. “How.  _ Dare _ . You.  _ Betray.  _ Me.”

Draco and Narcissa flinch but don’t reply, only charging at him with their strongest spells.

Voldemort casts a shield charm, then uses dark magic to blast the wall of traitorous Death Eaters away.

“Get the body!” he hears the mudblood Granger yell towards the Weasleys, and his visions goes red as they swarm towards Harry Potter’s glass coffin.

No. Not Harry.

Blind with rage, Voldemort charges at them, shouting crucios with all his might. The Weasleys scatter and dodge like the incessant flies that they are. Spells and curses fly overhead. So much screaming that Voldemort cannot hear Harry’s voice above the chaos and then--

Neville Longbottom steps into the Great Hall, dragging a bleeding Nagini from behind him, while holding Gryffindor’s sword.

For a moment, Voldemort can’t hear or see or feel anything. Only stare in this terrible rage at his Nagini, helpless in Longbottom’s grasp.

With a dead glare, Longbottom raises his sword and cuts off Nagini’s head.

Like a dying dragon, trying to reach its horde, Voldemort  _ roars. _


	16. That Loses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> might have cackled a lot at everyone's reactions last chapter. sorry not sorry. things get... better? >.>

Pain, pain, pain, he never hurt like this when his other Horcruxes died. Is it because Nagini is a living being? The first (live) horcrux he acknowledged as his own?

In the roars, like drowning in a thousand oceans, he doesn’t know. He only destroys.

Death Eater and Order Member alike, Voldemort unleashes spells that tears them apart from the inside out, leaving nothing but writhing bones that will eventually collapse into dust. Longbottom has to die. He should have taken care of that brat himself, all those years ago, then killed the Potters. Not because of his blood, but because of the potential of  _ threat _ .

Longbottom ducks away with a ratty blond woman. They seem to disappear into the walls, like fae, and Voldemort tries blast away every brick of Hogwarts to find them.

[ _ Nagini _ ,] he doesn’t realize that his roars have become parseltongue, so twisted and piercing as the sound of knives twisting within flesh. [ _ Nagini! _ ]

But she won’t answer now. She won’t return to him as a strange not-spirit like his Harry. He doesn’t know how he knows, maybe it’s the terrible  _ pain  _ in his chest, but he  _ knows _ . She’s not coming back.

She was beautiful. She was constant. She was  _ his,  _ even when he was a disgusting wraith that lived in the souls and flesh of other living beings, she thought he was a great master. She did not cower from him, only sought out his presence.

Longbottom will suffer tenfold what Lord Voldemort has.

The walls of Hogwarts begin to shake.

“--Tom! Tom, please don’t do this! I know you miss her, but don’t hurt Neville!”

[ _ Miss her?! _ ] he starts to cackle, nearly toppling over on his knees. [ _ What do you know about ‘missing’ someone, my Harry? I don’t feel things the same way that other humans do. She was mine and I will avenge what I lost! _ ]

Harry doesn’t scowl or bite back or yell. He only hovers silently before Voldemort and says solemnly, “Are you still so afraid, so prideful, that you won’t even admit that the very things you said means you miss her?”

_ Are you so afraid of being the  _ same _ as everyone else? _

Voldemort’s stance freezes. For once, he can’t think. Even the rage seems temporarily frozen.

But it returns easily enough.

[ _ How DARE you suggest I’m so weak-- _ ]

“The Voldemort who can’t stand to watch a little boy suffer at the hands of his relatives, who can’t bear to be powerless, who can’t bear for his magic to be  _ useless  _ in any situation, the Voldemort who is tearing this castle apart for his snake, uncaring of who dies or lives… are you saying he didn’t care about her?”

His breath catches in his throat. 

Harry’s lips actually turn up in a sad smile.

“Would it really be the end of the world if you admitted you can care about someone?”

But Voldemort never gets to answer. Hogwarts, tired of trembling from this unstable Dark Lord within her walls, begins raining stone from her foundations down upon him.

“Tom  _ move! _ ” Harry cries.

Voldemort barely dodges out of the barrage of stone before more rubble falls upon him. From behind, he sees Order members beginning to rush towards him, wands raised. Behind him, he sees the traitor Death Eaters. All other followers, the loyal ones like Bella, lie too still against the rubble…

Fine then. Let this be everyone’s grave. If this be Voldemort’s last stand, then let them  _ all  _ die here…!

“Don’t be stupid, Tom! Run away!”

“Lord Voldemort does not  _ run _ .”

“Really? How about during my Fifth year? At the Department of Mysteries? Or my First year with the Philosopher’s stone?”

“Exceptions.” Always exceptions with his equal.

“No, you’re  _ terrible  _ at strategizing when you’re like this! Always so damn dramatic and  _ stupid _ . Just make a tactical retreat and come back later when you’re strong enough!”

“I  _ AM  _ strong enough!” he whips his wand towards Harry, towards thin air in other’s eyes.

In that moment, Voldemort can hear and feel nothing but the flames burning all around him. The rush of stone falling towards him. The distant coolness that Harry radiates, even a meter apart from him. 

What is Voldemort doing? Pointing his wand at a ghost? A not-ghost? 

He knows he can never hurt Harry again.

“ _ You _ might be afraid of admitting that you need someone,” Harry says carefully, glowing brighter than all the flames, somehow louder than the collapsing rubble around them, “but I’m not.  _ I  _ need you, Tom Riddle. I need you to live. So run and live another day, then reclaim your castle when you can.”

For once, Voldemort doesn’t think. For once, Voldemort follows.


	17. That Crumbles

He apparates. Where, he doesn’t know at first. Anywhere to throw off the scent for traitorous scum and filthy Dumbledore sympathizers. He doesn’t realize until he’s hit by the smell of salt and brine that he’s back at where it all started.

This filthy place. Wool’s orphanage. The cave near the sea. The place where he killed children to survive.

If he walked into the ocean now, would its depths feel like his little ghost’s embrace?

Harry hovers tentatively behind him, always close. “Um… what are we doing  _ here? _ I told you that I destroyed all the horcruxes… there’s nothing in that cave but inferi.”

“I need an army.” Voldemort stumbles down into the cave, towards the lasted rickety boat.

“...Ah.”

“Don’t want to see your precious friends torn apart by inferi?” Voldemort almost mocks. But no, if this pain for Nagini tells him anything, then Harry will feel worse if his little pets die too… perhaps Voldemort will make those Order members into inferi too. Then they can keep Harry company.

(Should have stayed behind and taken Nagini’s body, Harry’s body, all of what’s  _ his _ , but no, no, no… the time now is to be ruthless and patient. Not… not  _ irrational _ .)

(Are you ever truly rational, Tom? A voice like  _ Dumbledore’s  _ seems to ask, to mock. And Voldemort brushes those thoughts away, tight into a box.)

“No. It’s just these inferi tried to kill me once. I can’t stop you from doing what you want. Can only ask.”

Voldemort wants to laugh. He does, his laughs echoing farther and farther into the sea. 

“Do you have  _ any  _ idea how much power you have over me, Harry Potter? What spell have you woven onto me, that I fear how you react lest I harm one hair on your friends? That I can run away at your very request? That I still want you by my side, even now?”

_ Even when you’re dead. _

Harry gapes at him, looking so silly and  _ human _ . Almost alive. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t act coy,” Voldemort reaches the stone entrance, where he cuts a bit of blood, drips it down to the stone.

“...Tom… those are just… emotions. You just… well, you must  _ tolerate  _ my company by now?”

“I don’t  _ feel  _ things!” he hisses as the stone entrance opens.

“So you insist. But tell me… in that dream you had last night… why did you try to help me?”

Voldemort freezes, half way through the stone entrance to his inferi, halfway still towards the sea. 

The answer is unspeakable.

“The Dark Lord doesn’t  _ feel _ .”

His little ghost only hovers and stares at him patiently.

“ _ I  _ don’t feel.”

Again, no answer.

“I am Lord Voldemort! What am I, if I’m not Lord Voldemort?!”

“...Why can’t you be Tom Marvolo Riddle too?”

“No.” Tom is so weak. So human. “I can’t be--”

“Useless? Didn’t a bunch of useless humans,  _ muggles _ , just take Hogwarts from you? No prophecy, no special magic. Just them.”

“No,” he shakes his head, retreating backwards into the cavern of inferi. “No, no…”

“Tom…” Why must Harry call him that? Always? His ghost’s hands reach out through the cavern entrance to touch Voldemort’s cheek. “What if you spent all these years, trying to be perfect, to be better than death, that you cut off the best parts of you? What if being human makes you  _ more _ ?”

His little ghost’s touch is so cold, colder than the sea. And yet, Voldemort feels  _ something  _ warm inside him. Something forgotten and lost. He stares at Harry’s green eyes, sees Avada Kedevra death and spring greens. Has anyone ever looked at him like this? Seen his ugliness, his weakness, his inhuman nature and found  _ more  _ before?

“...I don’t know how to be Tom Riddle anymore,” he admits.

“That’s alright. You’re already starting to again. Just, come back out here. Rethink your plans. Pick some magic that won’t feed on your soul. Please.”

It would be so easy, to use those inferi to snuff out all those who would oppose him. But that would mean destroying Harry’s pets, making Harry as low as the Dursleys made him. And he is  _ better  _ than those filthy muggles. He’s smarter. He’ll figure out how to outsmart the Order with his own wits, with more superior magic.

Tom Riddle steps back towards the sea.


	18. That Wants

“...What would a sane Tom Riddle do?”

Harry huffs out a laugh. “You’re asking  _ me?  _ How would I know? I’m just Harry.”

No, he thinks, you’re my soul.

They sit in the old attic of Wool’s Orphanage, reconstructed with Tom’s magic. A long time ago, the caretakers locked Tom Riddle up here for his strangeness, for his magic, and his dark eyes. How juvenile of him now to seek refuge here, in this mockery of the place he hated, now transformed with a warm fire and green blankets across the floor.

“You’re so much more than that,” Voldemort, no,  _ Tom  _ says. “You’ve lead me here after all.”

Those words seem to stun Harry. He hovers just above the blanket pile, mouth open in a soft ‘o’, before he runs his fingers through his curly locks and murmurs, “I didn’t do anything but watch.  _ You  _ made the decisions in the end. This is all you. What happens next is up to you.”

The flames crackle and dance, making Harry’s silver form softly glow in hues of gold and orange. He could be a flame spirit, bringing light to orphan children. He could be something ethereal, his body sparkling like bits of time dust that could escape between Tom’s fingers.

His fingers ache for it, for Harry’s touch.

Oh.

He knows what to do.


	19. That Needs

No one recognizes the face of Tom Riddle as he walks down Diagon Alley. If they do, they assume Tom is a distant relative. They ask after his Grandfather and wonder what happened to him. 

It’s strange, being back in an old face, one he hasn’t had since he created the cup horcrux, like putting on old shoes and discovering they still fit. Do snakes feel like this after they’ve shed their skin? The dead bits of them, now cracked and frayed and thin as gossamer wings, do they miss their shed skin?

He thought it’d be painful (as the traces of Dark Magic tend to be) peeling away the scales on his face, transfiguring back a nose and his hair. Yet the skin fell away easily, as natural as falling leaves from trees. He stared at the twenty-nine year old face,  _ his  _ old face, and felt like a stranger.

He’d spent a good few minutes glaring at his reflection, hating his weak self for his hesitations, when Harry spoke, “Figures that even after that snake face phase, you still look deadly gorgeous.”

Tom stared at him, lips slightly parted, mind racing and not racing all at once.

“What?” Harry’s cheeks had grown more silver. “I have eyes.”

“And good taste it seems.”

“Oh,  _ shut up. _ ”

That silver colour was  _ delightful. _

“I think your eyes are deadly gorgeous too.”

“ _ Arghh! _ ”

If only Harry recognizes him in this form, then Tom will  _ gladly  _ take it.

::

Tom observes, at first. He’s still not used to this old body, and he doesn’t have enough information to lead a counterattack on the Order. The Prophet reports that all surviving Death Eaters who were still loyal to him are either dead or in Azkaban. Most of them are dead, including Bella. But the other Death Eaters, the  _ traitors _ , are in witness protection until their trials begin. 

The new minister, Shacklebolt, has announced that all Death Eaters trials will take place within three days. Clearly eager to get the memory of Voldemort’s second reign done and over with. But still… all security will be focused on containing the traitors and the crowds. Theoretically, less security at Hogwarts, where Harry’s body still lies.

(He laughs to himself at how  _ hard  _ the Order has tried to break the glass coffin. He forgot, in the chaos of the coup and Nagini’s death, that his protective enchantments around Harry’s body are absolute. No one but him can touch his body again as long as Tom breathes.)

His first priority is to get Harry’s body back.

Harry stares at him incredulously. “Are you  _ sure  _ that should be your first priority right now? Not that I’m trying to help you rule the world again, but don’t you have other allies you can go to? Anyone else you can trust? The whole world is on the watch for you now.” He gestures to the rows and rows of wanted posters for Lord Voldemort. 

(He doesn’t say what they’re both thinking, that Tom could threaten and control someone with a simple curse to help him.)

“I don’t need anyone else’s  _ help _ .”

“But you’re alone--”

“I have you,” Tom interrupts, letting himself drown in those green eyes. “I only need  _ you _ .”

Everyone else has betrayed him or died. Of everyone he has met, only Harry hasn’t left...  And Harry will never die. This connection between him and Harry, Tom knows this is the key to winning. He has to preserve it at all costs. He has to have Harry’s body again and bring him back to life. He needs it more than he needs air.

Only then will he begin his plans to retake the world again.

Only then.


	20. That Sneaks

There’s something poetic about walking into Hogwarts with his old face, and no one knowing any better. The aurors are on the lookout with protection runes against confoundment charms. They’ve been trained to react when their colleagues react strangely, as a precaution against the Imperius curse. More in their ranks train with legilimency to scan those they deem suspicious. He heard Granger and Malfoy advising the head auror to put the best guards at Hogwarts, to protect the Boy-Who-Lived’s body.

But today, the day of the traitorous Death Eater trials, all too few are stationed here. 

Tom takes a leaf out of a muggles book and creates a fake badge and ID. He forges papers for his new identity as Thomas Knight, as a British-Bulgarian advisor, and comes up with an excuse to meet with Headmistress McGonnagall. Of course, McGonagall and Slughorn are likely to recognize him, but he doesn’t intend to actually be present for the meeting.

Only have enough time to get into Hogwarts and get out. If the body disappears under their very noses, without any sign of Voldemort, the Order will be even more humiliated.

Harry looks torn but shrugs. “It’s actually a very clever plan, once you got rid of the dramatics.”

“I am  _ not  _ dramatic.”

“You insisted on wearing black robes with a hint of silk green border and you insisted on parting your hair  _ just right  _ even if the plan doesn’t rely on your good looks.”

Besides, they both know how dramatic Lord Voldemort’s plans can be.

It’s surprisingly easy. How trusting, how foolish, are the Order mere weeks after taking back Hogwarts? Why do they not set up a guard dog, an  _ army  _ of guard dogs, to keep their precious Boy-Who-Lived safe? If it was him, he would never let any filthy hands touch this coffin. He would never let unworthy eyes see it.

As Tom steps back into the grand hall, and leans over Harry’s coffin, his reflection stares back at him where Harry’s face should be. All the spider lilies have started to droop, losing their enchantment. Yet Harry’s body stays cold and preserved. His sleeping equal. 

Tom runs his hands down the smooth planes of glass.

“Can we hurry up please before you start molesting my body?” Harry scowls.

“A moment,” Tom whispers. Though that’s an idea, if it will bring back that silver tinge to Harry’s cheeks. He takes out his wand, tossing the stolen one over his shoulder. Then he taps the glass, traces out some runes, and hisses, [ _ Come to me, the boy who sleeps eternal _ .]

“ _ That’s  _ what you called me?!” 

The glass vanishes, and finally, Tom touches Harry’s corpse. Lukewarm. Barely cold or warm. Just like a doll. 

(Not for long.)

Tom gathers up the body in his arms and then, simply walks out.

The guards do not see Tom carrying a body, but merely Tom cradling mountain loads of scrolls and paperwork.

No one notices the body is gone until morning.


	21. That Caresses

Back within Saint Wool’s orphanage, he lays Harry’s body down in his old room, in his old bed… Only this bed is more extravagant than the bed he slept in as a child. This bed is large enough for two people to lie side-by-side with the softest cushions and silk green blankets. Silently, Tom settles Harry’s body down until he looks like he’s sleeping peacefully away…

Spellbound, Tom lets his hand linger along the soft curls of Harry’s hair. He didn’t know human touch could be this soft. His fingers trail down to Harry’s cheek, to how cold it is, and he frowns.

“I’m right  _ here _ .”

Tom doesn’t turn around to see Harry’s ghost. He only watches how still Harry’s body is. This corpse. This doll. This empty shell of flesh and bone.

( _ You did this to him _ .)

( _ But I can undo it. _ )

“Yes,” Tom lets his touch linger for a moment longer, then snatches away his hand and faces  _ his  _ Harry. The one who is here with him. “I know.”

“I still say this is a terrible idea. You could be… doing something else. I liked your approach to getting into Hogwarts, using alternative means to get what you want. That’s growth! You don’t know how long it will take to revive me or if you  _ can  _ revive me. We don’t have a lot of time. Are you sure you want to waste it on that?”

“It’s not a waste!” To have Harry, the real breathing Harry, standing next to him, breathing the same air, close enough to touch, would be a miracle he was too stupid to know of before. He’ll treasure it now, in the future. He has to do this. “I’ll have you by my side in the flesh soon enough!”

He doesn’t see Harry’s sad smile, or his glance at the waning moon…

Harry’s ghostly figure is particularly bright tonight.


	22. That Binds

“Let the light guide the warrant soul back into its rightful body,” Tom murmurs in Latin, sweat coursing down his brow, while sparks fly all around the room. Harry’s body lies on the bed, covered in runes drawn by blood. He already tried a few neutral blood rituals but none of them worked. Now for this one, to call a soul back to its host… “Come, and bind yourself together once again!”

Gusts of wind howl and circle around the body and Tom, trying to pull whatever wayward souls are nearby into the body. With the golden glow of the runes, the gusts of wind could be like otherworldly hands clawing at the air for spirits.

Harry’s ghost hovers nervously by Tom’s side, hands twitching as if to bat away the wind. But no need. The wind does nothing to move him. Nothing happens. No binding. No live Harry.

Tom tosses the tome aside and reaches for a new one, hands shaking.

“You need to take a break. When’s the last time you ate something?” 

“I’ll eat with you later.”

“And how long will  _ that  _ be? A year? A decade? You’ll collapse from hunger at this rate and then where will you be?” 

“Just another ritual… one more try…”

“And you’ve tried dozens of times already! You need rest! We don’t have a lot of  _ time  _ left, Tom, I--”

But Tom has already begun muttering the words for the next ritual, begun tracing movements in the air with his wand. His eyes dance with concentration at these invisible runes, at these ancient languages that will bring him to  _ his  _ Harry.

_ Bind him to me.  _

_ Bind him to me forever. _

He wants the kind of ritual that will tie together their life-strings, so that Harry can never wander far from him. He wants the kind of ritual that won’t let Tom live without Harry. He wants to caress Harry, while his heart is still beating, otherwise this empty corpse is nothing but meaningless sacks of muscle and skin--

Harry starts to scream, falling over, writhing in agony. His hands clutched to his scar, his green eyes bleeding out even greener trailers of tears… like crying out death…

_ Yes, it’s working, it must be working! _

But, no, why is Harry disappearing? Why is his body sagging downwards, as if slugs have begun eating the bones and muscles from the inside? Harry’s corpse, its skin, beginning to rag away as if ripped apart by some other shapeless soul that has decided to reside there.

Meanwhile, Harry’s ghost,  _ his  _ Harry, screams.

No, stop. Stop at once. 

Tom halts his chanting, and shouts whatever spells he can think of to preserve the body, to get  _ whatever is in the body out,  _ while Harry’s ghost seems to fall over, shaking.

“Don’t, don’t!” 

_ Don’t take him away, don’t kill him again, don’t, don’t! _

But the body crumbles away into dust.

There’s just a ghost and a dark lord left.


	23. That Breathes

No, what kind of a dark lord can’t bring someone back to life?

The inferi, reanimating a corpse with someone else’s soul, hell  _ he even came back from the dead _ . And yet, he can’t even bring back the one person he wants most? Even when their ghost is lying in pain, right next to him? He can’t do this one thing?

He’s nothing.

What’s left of Tom Marvolo Riddle begins to laugh and laugh, half choking on his breaths, half choking on these insipid tears that crawl out like swarms afraid to remain in his toxic heart. His hold on power, stripped away from him twice… His horcruxes, all destroyed… His followers, traitors or dead… and him? He is no better than a muggle with this poisonous  _ feelings  _ shackling down his heart, no better, nothing…

“...I should have never met you again,” Tom half-laughs and chokes. “You made me into this. You made me  _ feel.  _ You made me want to  _ save you _ . And for  _ what? _ ”

Harry lies still on the ground, not hovering for once, face worn with fatigue and pain. If not for his bright ghostly colour, he would seem human. Alive.

“Tom,” Harry says quietly, like a quiet breath.

“I don’t want anything to do with you.”  _ I want everything to do with you _ . “I never want to see you again.”  _ I want to see you every day.  _ “Just  _ LEAVE me! _ Why did you come for someone like me when I can’t even undo what I did?!”

Cold hands slide up against both sides of Tom’s face. He looks up in this haze of tears into green, into Harry carefully cradling Tom’s face with a sad smile.

“Do you remember that memory, the one you saw of me in the cupboard?”

...How could Tom ever forget?

“And do you remember how cold I was? How tired and alone?”

Harry pauses, as if forgetting he doesn’t need to take another breath. Then shrugs.

“Because I do. And it was… agony. I wanted to die there. I thought that anything would be better than living with people who wanted me gone, who told me I was worthless. But I never did. I remember this warm feeling in my scar, something that held me tight and told me to just  _ breathe _ . Just  _ be _ . And when I closed my eyes, I dreamed I was in an attic, huddling with another boy for warmth. And in that moment… I was happy.”

Tom stares at him, incomprehensibly, strangely.

“Don’t you see, Tom? That was  _ you _ . When I was alone, you saved me. Just with that one kindness. Maybe it wasn’t  _ this  _ you. But it was a part of you that was capable of feeling sorry for another lonely boy. And when I died, I realized that the boy in my scar and the man who killed me were the same… but I chose to come back for the boy in my scar. I came back for  _ you _ .”

Oh…  _ Oh _ .

“I didn’t make you this way, Tom. You did.”


	24. That Is

Wordlessly, they agree that Tom needs a break. When Harry’s cold transparent fingers brush against Tom’s and he tilts his head towards the door. Tom silently follows, relishing the cold sensations as Harry’s hand occasionally passes through Tom’s palm, this dipping and passing substitute for holding hands.

Eventually they make their way to the courtyard, now overgrown with weeds and grass up to Tom’s knees. Tom could obliterate all of the weeds for being in his way, but their stubborn roots would grow back. Even between the cracks of stone pavement, starving and gorging on water, they grow.

Tom and Harry continue on their walk to the top of a hill that overlooks the orphanage, and a withered old tree softly breathing near the top.

When Tom stares at Harry, in the dying light of dusk and the haze of autumn fog, he sees something so much  _ more  _ than just Harry.

He sees the bags under Harry’s eyes and presses himself further into Harry’s space, shoulders vanishing into shoulders.

“I hurt you with that ritual… are you… alright?” The words slip and jumble against Tom’s lips. Such foreign words that someone as good as Harry can say so easily. And yet  _ Tom  _ is the cause of Harry’s pain today. Tom did this… what right does he have to ask if Harry is  _ alright? _

Harry is always smiling at him. A treasure he doesn’t deserve.

“I’m fine Tom. It was just my body. I don’t exactly need a body anymore, do I?”

_ But you do. To stay with me, you do,  _ Tom thinks. And yet, would it be so bad, for Harry to be a ghost forever? With only Tom to see him, Harry is truly Tom’s… And yet he looks like he can disappear at any moment…

“Tell me something good,” Tom demands. “Tell me everything about you.”

Harry’s eyes widen. “Well… you know the most important things…”

But not everything.

“Tell me more about the Dursleys. Hogwarts. What was everything like to you?” Because Harry isn’t just his horcrux or his ghost, Harry was and is human. Harry is still alive to him, and living beings deserve their stories.

_ You’re the only story I care about _ .

Harry’s lips actually wobble, his eyes shine so green, and Tom nearly takes back his words before Harry whispers, “Of course.”

He tells Tom about cupboards and shrilly aunts and bully cousins. He tells Tom about accidental magic, landing on the roof, turning his teacher’s hair blue, about the garden snakes that liked to give him dead mice to scare Aunt Petunia. He tells him about his fears of being sent back to Hogwarts, of being ordinary, of the extraordinary bravery of Ron and Hermione. He tells him about the diary, his godfather, dragons, Cedric, and a witch Tom wants to murder personally named Umbridge. 

And then there’s the fake locket, the cave, Dumbledore, the horcrux hunt. Then he talks about walking to his death and…

“Here I am,” Harry laughs self deprecatingly.

This soul, this extraordinary soul that he would have never known if his soul piece had never hidden itself away in Harry’s. 

“Here you are,” Tom reaches out, expecting cold and emptiness and  _ Harry,  _ only to grasp a slightly solid hand.

They both blink in surprise.

Harry’s hand is still translucent, and yet he’s shining brighter than ever before.

In the light of the stars, in the rising new moon of darkness, for the first time, Tom Riddle holds Harry Potter’s hand for real.


	25. That Kisses

“You’re real,” Tom blurts out, which is silly because  _ of course  _ Harry is real. Tom could never imagine anyone this good. “Your hands, I…”

He can pull Harry close, he can hold him, he can feel Harry’s breaths against his. Harry might be glowing bright as the full moon, as if he stole this new moon’s light, but he’s corporeal. He’s an endless possibility. He’s the embodiment of a star. He’s so much more than Tom could ever think.

They stare wide-eyed at each other, before Tom reaches out with both hands, cupping Harry’s face, and kisses him. The first kiss is brief, like an angel’s touch, lingering and yet unlingering. Somehow there and yet, was it there? Sweet. 

Tom draws back, catches sight of Harry’s dilated pupils, and just has to kiss him again, savour the taste. Then again, because Harry’s lips are so cold. He needs to warm them up, lick a trail to memorize the texture, memorize these lips that have spoken Harry’s story. He kisses Harry’s nose, his forehead, and again, his lips.

Always his lips.

How could Tom ever go back to being alone, if  _ this  _ is what it feels like to be with an equal? 

“I love you,” Tom kisses him again and again. “I love you so much.” For what could this be but love? Why didn’t he realize this before? That his soul piece, the one in Harry’s scar, loved Harry Potter? That Tom loves him now? Craves him? How could he not realize that he wants to be with Harry forever if not for love? 

This boy who came from the other side to forgive him, to be kind to him, to stay with him.

Perhaps, Voldemort with no soul pieces left, had no choice to fall.

Then Harry begins to cry, tears falling from his face, head shaking. “You can’t… you can’t love me… Tom no…”

“But I do!” He brings their foreheads together, has to crane his neck and shoulders down to see eye level with his Harry. “I understand now, why I want you back so much. I shouldn’t have killed you. I shouldn’t have made any of the horcruxes. I should have kept going with Dark magic, discovering new spells, until I met you. I should have waited or reincarnated to meet you again. I should have treasured you for  _ you _ .”

All those people he killed for horcruxes, for immortality. What a waste when he could have tried to find his equal instead. After all, what would this feeling be like with a whole soul?

Harry begins to tremble, his sad smile falling as Tom kisses away his tears.

“...So you regret their deaths…”

The only one Tom truly regrets is Harry’s. But he supposes, if he had a whole soul again, he might regret the rest. He supposes, that what he really regrets is letting his soul fall apart in the first place.

“Yes.”

Harry’s eyes glow brighter than the North Star, and finally he returns Tom’s kisses, throwing his arms around Tom’s neck like a noose.

“Then,” he half-chokes between kisses, “I’m sorry Tom.”

...What?

Harry leans in, his fingers going through Tom’s cheek. Wait.  _ Through?  _

Tom steps back. That glow Harry had once had is… dying now. Little trails of light floating up to the new moon, darkness eating light. Harry’s form, once so luminescent in star and moonlight, begins to fade like wisps of smoke.

“No,” Tom shakes, reaching out to hold Harry close. But he only crashes through Harry’s form. “No, no, no, no,  _ you were here! I could TOUCH you! Why…?! _ ”

The Deathly Hallows mark replace Harry’s haunting irises, etched in a murky green.

“...I made a deal to come back to you, for seven new moons. And if the conditions were met, I’d have to go away…”

“Conditions?! What conditions?!”

Harry’s outline is barely there, like the blurs of half-erased chalk. 

“...I just wanted to save you…” comes the quiet cry.

“I don’t need you to save me!” Tom roars, hands reaching, grabbing, grasping, at nothing, nothing, nothing…! “I need you  _ stay! _ ” He doesn’t deserve to be saved!

Harry’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, to all I believe in this world, that there is a happy ending. hang in there.
> 
> (is stabbed)


	26. That Vows

“No, not Harry, not Harry….”

Tom Riddle doesn’t know how long he wanders on that hill, by that tree. The clouds have covered everything now, no hint of stars or even the black of the new moon. Why would any stars shine when Harry’s ghost has disappeared?

_ It should have been me,  _ that thought strikes him. Harry shouldn’t have come on this misguided quest to ‘save’ the Dark Lord. Harry should have stayed where good souls go, with his family. Tom sees now that the death eater revolt, the Order rising up, would have happened no matter what. Voldemort should have died at Hogwarts, where Harry did. 

And yet he, pointlessly, lives.

“Do you crave it, Tom?” 

Whirling around, Tom sees a luminescent figure by the wrinkled tree. His heart lurches up in his throat, has Harry returned…?

But then Tom recognizes that abhorrent fluffy beard and those obscene twinkling eyes. 

“ _ Dumbledore, _ ” he sneers.

Yet in a blink, the figure changes faces. An unfamiliar skinny woman with pupils that try to run off her face. His mother…?

“Not quite,” the figure says, in another blink taking the form of Abraxas. Then Bellatrix. Then more victims that Tom has killed and never known the names of. “I am a messenger. I have no form that your eyes can understand so I take the form of those who have died. Those that you knew.”

Again, the messenger’s face becomes Dumbledore’s. 

“What do you  _ want _ ,” Tom snaps. He doesn’t have time for this. He needs to find another ritual, anything, to find Harry’s soul again. He needs to know what deal Harry made. He needs to know what it cost so he can undo it and they can be together again--

“I thought you’d like to know what the soul called Harry James Potter paid to have your soul made whole again.”

Tom nearly slams his fists against the messenger, the Dumbledore-fake. “ _ What _ .”

His soul… whole again? Why would…?

“Tell me everything.”

The messenger smiles, a mere farce of Dumbledore’s kindly one.

::

There once was a boy... who found a withered soul fragment at a train station. And though the boy was told to look away from it, he did not. No, the boy saw something of himself in the withered soul. The boy saw another boy suffering alone in an orphanage.

And so the boy held the soul fragment close in his arms, in the soul fragment’s first hug, and the boy saw every instant that this soul fragment had protected him in his childhood, in this dark cold cupboard he used to live in.

The boy saw something kind.

And when the boy learned what the soul fragment would suffer for eternity, he thought it too cruel.

“This soul deserves another chance,” said the boy. “This soul should not be torn apart and left to wander alone through fire and ice. This soul should have the chance to be reborn and start again. This soul is not completely irredeemable, perhaps he can make better choices again.”

And yet death told the boy no.

To split one’s soul is taboo.

To split one’s soul is evil.

To split one’s soul is monstrous.

To split one’s soul means never getting on a train, means agony forever alone forever… alone…

Irredeemable.

“What if I could prove that he’s not a completely monster? What if I show you Tom Riddle’s remaining soul fragment can be kind?”

“Someone still has to suffer punishment,” said Death. “Someone still has to pay the toll.”

“Then I will pay it.”

Death had never met anyone willing to show mercy to a monster like this. Death had never met an  _ enemy  _ who would do this for their enemy.

And so Death said, “You will have seven moons to show us that this soul fragment is capable of love and regret. If he is, his soul will be made whole again, and you will suffer what he should have suffered instead.”

And Harry Potter, sweet and foolish Harry Potter, said yes.

::

“...No…” Tom Riddle shakes his head. “No, that can’t be… so he’s still alive but…”

“He’ll never stop being in pain, where he is now…” the messenger shrugs.

“I won’t accept this! He doesn’t belong there! Take me instead, that punishment was meant for  _ me!  _ I killed those people, I made seven horcruxes, I killed Harry Potter! I should be the one to burn and freeze for eternity! Not Harry,  _ never  _ Harry!”

“Oh?” the messenger’s blank eyes grow eerie, as the smile slips off their face. “You would sacrifice yourself for him?”

“Yes!”

“You would do anything for him?”

“ _ Yes!  _ I would die for him!” 

The messenger laughs. “There’s no need for that. Dying is too cheap, too easy. No, I think your punishment should be living. I will put Harry Potter’s soul into stasis for the time being. Instead, I will give you a task, and if you are unable to do it, then… well, you know what will happen.”

“I can live through anything for Harry.”

The messenger’s eyes flash. “I truly hope so.”


	27. Interlude: Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! It's been a hectic day! Tomorrow's even more busy so I'll be posting the last chapter on Monday instead.

It’s so cold.

Is dying supposed to be so cold? 

Harry doesn’t remember it being so cold the first time around. He remembers it being painless. Just… green light, a sense of peace that he completed his purpose, that he’ll see his parents and Sirius and Remus again, and then… the train station.

Nothing like this numb cold, where Harry can’t even warm his own hands together. It’s dark. He wonders if he’s sleeping, but if he’s sleeping, how can he think?

Maybe… maybe this isolation was Tom Riddle’s punishment. Though… it’s not as bad as Harry thought it would be. He thought there would be more pain. More fire too. 

No, this is just cold.

This is just alone.

He could sleep forever… he’d deserve it…

After all, how could he pick saving the man who murdered his parents over seeing them again? How could he grow fond of a murderer? How could he look at him as a human being?

And yet, when he looked at the horcrux that once lived in his scar, he couldn’t look away. It was like there was a part of Harry now in that horcrux, a part he could not leave behind.

_ Neither can live while the other survives. _

Harry wants to laugh, if the dark will let him. Perhaps that prophecy will chase him even in death, perhaps it means that Harry can never rest while Tom Riddle survives. Perhaps Harry was meant to teach Tom Riddle to live.

He doesn’t know anymore.

He just knows that he’s empty.

It’s dark.

And everything is so cold.

His parents, his family, probably hate him now. He’ll never see them again. No one will want him as he is now, a thing that is neither alive or dead. He should just sleep forever, breathe in and out. Death can continue, life can continue…

“... _ Harry _ …”

Someone is calling him, somewhere in the dark. Their voice makes his throat clog up and his eyes begin to burn with sorrow…

“... _ Come back to me, Harry… Please… _ ”

He can’t. He has to save someone. He has to take their punishment. He doesn’t remember why or for who.

“ _ I need you _ .”

No one needs him.

“ _ Don’t leave me alone. _ ”

...Harry… Harry said that once… didn’t he? In a cupboard… and there was a voice in his dreams, in his  _ scar,  _ that said…

“I’m here!” Harry chokes out, wrestling against the dark and cold, fighting to open his eyes, “Tom, I’m  _ here! _ ”

His eyes tear open.


	28. That Haunts and Wakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of a double update.

The soul looks up at him, still snivelling and crying from its sudden death via Avada Kedevra. He and his followers weren’t very creative back then, were they? Those words shouted so easily to take a life, _Avada Kedevra,_ are so mindlessly childish when Tom has seen how creative muggles can be in their death traps. He’s seen death camps, muggle wars, prisons that thrive off of torture.

Muggles can be rather ingenious when they make their instruments of death. If Tom had been born muggle, doubtless he would have built the greatest death machine of all, to rid the earth of scum.

Now he wanders, ageless and deathless, collecting souls.

Tom stares at the soul for a little while longer. He thinks he remembers this face. A woman he tortured long ago for information about the Triwizard tournament… Bertha or something… 

Time is no longer linear for him. The messenger of death drops Tom off where he’s needed, in time and space, to collect souls. He’s seen so many of his old victims… Myrtle Warren, his father and grandparents, Hepzibah Smith… 

Slowly, Tom extends a hand to the crying woman’s soul.

“Come,” he says, because he can’t comfort. Not really. “It’s time to move on.”

The soul only cries louder.

Tom suppresses the urge to sigh. Long ago, he might have blown up at the soul for delaying him. But now, he sees it doesn’t matter. In his lifetime, he’s killed thousands. Some souls take longer than others to move on. And Tom still has who knows how many souls of his to send to the train.

(“ _ Give each and every soul that you’ve had a hand in killing peace. Give them comfort so they’ll walk with you to the next train, the next life. When you’ve comforted and sent each one on, then you may see the one called Harry James Potter again, _ ” the messenger said long ago.

And Tom, thinking it easy, said yes.)

It isn’t easy.

Some souls recognize him, particularly those from his Hogwarts years, and refuse to go with him. He spends decades trying to convince those souls that it isn’t a trick, that he’s changed, that he needs them to move on. Those souls think him a reaper from hell, ready to pull them into damnation. Making his father’s soul move on had taken almost a century.

In the end, the only solution is time. The only solution is waiting by that soul, watching that soul grow tired of eternity, and then finally the soul moves on.

How long has Tom wandered like this? How many centuries has it been? 

He almost forgets why he’s doing this. He almost forgets the name Tom Riddle, and thinks of himself as Death incarnate (and how ironic would that be? When all he feared before was death?)

But he can’t forget Harry’s eyes. He can’t forget the way Harry told him,  _ I forgive you _ . He can’t forget how Harry disappeared before his eyes…

“...I’m tired,” Tom says to the crying soul.

She looks up at him with furrowed brows.

Tom tries to do what Harry would, he puts on a gentle smile, even if it’s a mere farce compared to Harry’s. “Aren’t you tired as well, miss? Don’t you want to rest?”

Quietly, the soul looks at the bags between his eyes and thin build. 

Slowly, she nods.

::

Tom takes the soul to the train station, and before she steps on the train, she says, “I hope you get to rest too. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

_ So do I,  _ he thinks.

::

More centuries pass. 

Tom wants to curse his past self for creating so much  _ work  _ for him now. How many souls has it been? How many has he killed? 

The messenger only smiles when Tom demands to know how many souls are left.

“Only one,” they say. “Though, this one, you have to convince to stay with you.”

Tom’s eyes widen. Could it be…? Finally…?

::

The forest is dark and lonely, as Tom and the messenger watch seventeen-year old Harry Potter walk into the forest for his final confrontation with past Voldemort. Tom wants to trail his fingers along Harry’s face, wants to turn Harry around and hide him in Hogwarts, wants to yell at Harry to protect himself. Why sacrifice your own life for so many? Why, why,  _ why _ .

Voldemort appears, making his speech. Tom has never wanted to punch himself before until now. He watches as Voldemort draws his wand and Harry doesn’t even fight because his little fool thinks he should die instead of live and Tom roars, “Just  _ live,  _ Harry! Don’t go, don’t let me kill you, just  _ live! _ ”

But the Avada Kedevra hits.

And Harry’s soul wanders to the train station.

::

“...He doesn’t deserve it,” Tom finally appears, just as Harry picks up the infant-looking horcrux from under the bench. Tom wonders what face he is wearing now, what mask the messenger of Death gave Tom for this moment.

_ What are you doing?  _ Every selfish cell he has ever had roars at him,  _ Tell Harry to stay with you! This is your chance! _

“You should leave him behind,” Tom continues. “Go be with your family. That one has been lost for a long time and he’ll never be found again.”

“...He wasn’t always lost,” Harry looks at him, and Tom thinks,  _ see me, see me. It’s your Tom.  _ But this Harry doesn’t know him yet, should never know him. “Leaving him like this is too cruel.”

“It’s what he deserves!” Tom snaps.

“He  _ saved  _ me!” Harry roars back. Then stops, as if this thought had never occurred to him before and that’s when Tom knows there is no turning back. “Oh… back with the Dursleys… he was sleeping in my scar… he was there for me… he protected me…”

“Survival instinct,” Tom tries to rebuttal, glaring down at the horcrux babe in Harry’s arms. “Trying to protect his host so he wouldn’t die…”

_ Pure selfishness. _

“Then kindness,” Harry steps closer, “at that moment, was his survival instinct.”

Tom stares, speechless. “You…!” He wants to roar that kindness isn’t a survival instinct at all. Humans will always choose themselves over others. And yet, how many times has Tom seen souls sacrifice themselves pointlessly for others when they could have lived? Lily and James Potter… Merope, his own mother… “Don’t be selfish!” he finds himself snapping, “Don’t do this for him! Live for those who are waiting for you!” 

Even if it leaves Tom alone.

But this Harry doesn’t listen. This Harry merely glares at him and shouts something about redemption and second changes. This Harry turns away before Tom can grab him and walks towards Death, towards becoming a ghost, towards a Voldemort who doesn’t even want him, and Tom falls to his knees.

“...Harry…” he’s at his limit. He can’t watch Harry walk away again, he can’t watch Harry disappear again, he can’t, he can’t… “Come back to me Harry, please…” Don’t disappear for a monstrous being like Tom Riddle. Just live. “I need you.”

He thinks he hears the shadows, the souls in the train station, their footsteps reverberating all around him. He’s like a drop of water in a bustling ocean. 

_ Don’t leave me alone…! _

No. That’s the one plea he cannot say. Not if he wants Harry to be happy.

From the corner of his vision, a pair of shoes come into view. The messenger of death, likely. Tom doesn’t bother to look at the messenger’s sickening and ever changing face. 

“Come to laugh at what I’ve become?” Tom sneers. “I couldn’t do what you asked. I couldn’t ask him to stay with me.”

The messenger’s death sounds more muffled than usual, drowned out by the loud footsteps of souls going back and forth between trains. 

“I don’t understand… you wanted him to move on…? Even if it meant you’d be alone here forever?”

Tom doesn’t need the messenger to tell him how pathetic that is. He already knows how weak that sounds. But Harry deserves better.

He says nothing.

“Tom…” the messenger’s voice grows louder, more clear and more familiar… “Tom, please look at me.”

Someone kneels down before him, and gently cups his face. His hands are warm, like a gentle fire after a cold storm or the first comforting blinks of sleep. Tom remembers these hands beings so much colder, so much more transparent.

It’s not the messenger who kneels in front of him.

It’s Harry.

Tom almost chokes.

“You’re not real,” he should pull away, hiss and curse at the messenger for wearing Harry’s face, and yet like a moth staring at the moon, he can’t.

This Harry doesn’t look like the seventeen-year old one who walked towards Lord Voldemort and Death. This Harry doesn’t look too happy or too bland as the messenger would if he wore Harry’s face. This Harry has bags under his eyes, a sweet crimson blush on his cheeks, curled hair so long that it nearly covers his piercing green eyes… eyes with the deathly hallows marks within them. This Harry looks older and a bit worn and too thin and so  _ warm _ …!

Tom practically slams his hands over Harry’s, making them press harder against Tom’s face. 

Harry’s blush grows deeper. How red can it become?

“...Hello Tom.”

“You’re here,” Tom could squeeze these hands forever and they wouldn’t pass through him. “You’re real. You’re…”  _ my Harry,  _ “but how?!”

Harry’s smile turns sheepish. “I think I was… sleeping? That’s what Death told me… and then I heard you calling me and I woke up… I’m not very clear on the details either…”

Tom’s grip on him tightens. “Is this a test? Where did the messenger go? Where’s death?!” Those marks are still in Harry’s eyes, this doesn’t mean that Tom or Harry are free…!

“Tom, Tom, it’s okay! We’re free. Everything’s fine!” 

“You don’t know that!” Tom thought everything would be fine if he brought Harry back to life, if he became a Dark Lord and ruled over everything. And yet there are always elements he overlooks. Harry always disappears…!

“But I do!” Harry says. “Tom, you’ve been wandering for almost a millennium. Don’t you think that’s enough punishment? Don’t you think you deserve to be happy now?” 

A millennium? Has Tom really lost track of time that much?

He shakes his head. “That’s not enough. Not for killing you. Not for making you disappear…”

“You didn’t make me disappear though. I chose that.”

“And you shouldn’t have! You deserve so much better than me! You deserve to be with your family and grow old and…!” Tom can’t bring himself to say the last one.

“But I love you.”

Those three words stop Tom in his tracks. No one’s ever said that to him as if it were a fact of life, as if it were an irreversible truth, as if it is a joy.

“...What?”

Harry leans in and kisses Tom’s lips.

“I love you,” he says again. “Maybe that’s not what either of us deserve after all this time, but it’s what I choose. And I love you. And I think… maybe, you might still love me too?”

Tom freezes. Then, he takes.

He kisses like a drowning man, like a dementor who has learned the secret to being human again is kiss like giving breaths. He kisses as if he’ll never kiss Harry again, as if Harry might vanish still, like a dream. He kisses until he can’t kiss anymore, can’t breathe, can’t kiss without seeing stars. And when he steps back, Harry looks at him with an adoration he doesn’t deserve.

“So you do love me.”

Tom huffs and throws his arms around Harry to hide his trembling.

“Would I wait a millennium for you if I didn’t?”

He closes his eyes and leans his head down to breathe in Harry’s scent, to feel Harry’s hair against his lips. Quietly, Harry hugs back and Tom ignores the wet tears beginning to stain his shift.

“...Thank you,  _ thank you for getting me out of there. _ ”

Tom tightens the hold, careful not to dig his nails into Harry’s back. He still doesn’t deserve Harry, still thinks it’s selfish to ask Harry to stay, but if this is his only chance to take Harry away. He’ll do it.

“So, what now?” Tom will fight Death himself if he has to. 

Harry leans back to look up at Tom and smiles. “Don’t worry,” the deathly hallows marks glinting like stars in his eyes, “we have all the time we want. We can live a life together, many lives if you want, until you get sick of me.”

“I won’t get sick of you,” Tom says immediately. He’ll make sure Harry keeps his word and they’ll have countless lifetimes together.

“Then forever,” Harry promises as if it’s possible he can.

Tom doesn’t care if it’s possible or not. They’ll  _ make  _ it possible. They’re together again and they can do anything.

He trails kisses and red marks against Harry’s skin.

Forever.

::

The “messenger,” or rather, Death, watches the two in the distance. “Well, what do you know? True love frees my Master from my punishment game after all.” He fights the urge to laugh. Ah well.

If the Master of Death wants forever with a formally split soul, who is Death to argue now that the soul has proven his devotion?

No, Death won’t touch them. Not anymore.


	29. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last part of a double update

The Order never finds Harry Potter’s body or Voldemort’s. Whispers and rumours rise and fall over the years, but after thirty years, no one fears Voldemort anymore. Harry Potter has a memorial built within Hogwarts, some wizards and witches try to start the cult of Harry Potter, believing that Harry’s spirit killed Voldemort in the end. But Hermione makes sure to stomp out the cult whenever it pops up again.

She visits Draco for tea still, having granted him and his mother a legal pardon for their crimes of war. She marries Ron. The three of them have a monthly drinking session where they don’t talk about their scars and they certainly don’t talk about Harry.

Draco never marries.

“...Do you think, Granger, that he’ll forgive me? If there’s an other side?” Draco says, almost passed out against Ron from one of their drinking sessions.

Hermione remembers a shy and awkward boy who only wanted friends in first year, remembers how he saved her from a troll, and how he saved Draco from fiendfrye when he could have left him to die.

“Of course.” She hopes he’s proud of what’s she done too, what she’s rebuilt of wizard society. “I know he is.”

::

Two wizards pack up their traveling shop within a suitcase, and begin to walk to the nearest cafe. Harry stretches out his arms and leans against Tom, smiling as Tom wordlessly pulls him closer in a tight embrace.

“Sold a lot of potions today,” Harry grins. Snape would roll in his grave if he learned how competent a potioneer Harry can be with a proper teacher.

“Hm,” Tom agrees. Though he’s more satisfied at the amount of books he sold. The book he wrote on Practical Dark Arts has earned him a good name within the wizarding community. Well, earned his alias Toma Knight, a good name.

“Where shall we go next? Italy? France?” Harry looks at the headlines in Poland’s newspapers, and smiles when he sees the headline for British Minister Granger’s new laws. 

“I don’t particularly care,” Tom says. As long as he’s with Harry, anywhere is fine.

“You’re no fun.”

“Fine. I find himself craving a decent crepe.”

Harry’s steps brighten. “France it is! Or maybe Italy! I’m torn.”

“Is food all you can think of?”

“You try sleeping for a millennium and see how hungry  _ you  _ get. We may be as close to immortal as we can be but doesn’t mean I can’t go  _ hungry _ .”

Tom scowls, whirling Harry around so he’s caged in Tom’s arms, face to face.

“You’ll never go hungry again.” Not if Tom can help it. 

Harry’s eyes widen before he slumps forward and leans his head against Tom’s chest, holding him close. “I know.”

“And you’ll never be cold again.”

“I know.”

“Or lonely.”

“I know.”

“Especially lonely.”

Harry’s shoulders start shaking. But Tom can’t help the words that pour out. He should be the only one who makes Harry cry happy tears.

“...And you’ll never have to wait another thousand years for me,” Harry says, suddenly pulling his hands up to Tom’s neck and pulling him down to his chest, to his heart beat. “I’m alive. I’m with you.”

That soft heartbeat from that soft heart rings true. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this and journeying with me. I started this after I found an old and abandoned drabble that I had wrote back in 2011. I thought it would be a nice project to get me to write daily again, just short little things that I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading. Especially for a dynamic between Voldemort and Harry Potter.
> 
> Thank you for proving me wrong.
> 
> I wanted to linger a little bit longer on what Tom had to do to get Harry back, but I think at the core of the story, it's about Tom and Harry. And you can see how that time away from Harry affected Tom by the way he acts.
> 
> Thank you for letting me write a gentle Tomarry dynamic. Thank you for reading. Thank you for existing. You are all so wonderful and I'm blessed to have kind readers like you.

**Author's Note:**

> Always happy to get prompts at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/youlightthesky1), my [writing tumblr](http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/), or my [art tumblr](https://youlighttheskyart.tumblr.com/)


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